�
In
1948 Frank Wisner was appointed director
of the Office of Special Projects. Soon afterwards it was renamed
the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). This became the espionage
and counter-intelligence branch of the Central
Intelligence Agency.
Wisner
was told to create an organization that concentrated on "propaganda,
economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage,
demolition and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states,
including assistance to underground resistance groups, and support
of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the
free world."
Later
that year Wisner established Mockingbird, a program to influence the
domestic American media. Wisner recruited Philip
Graham (Washington Post) to
run the project within the industry. Graham
himself recruited others who had worked for military intelligence
during the war. This included James Truitt,
Russell Wiggins, Phil Geyelin, John Hayes and Alan Barth. Others like
Stewart Alsop,
Joseph
Alsop and
James
Reston, were
recruited from within the Georgetown Set.
According
to Deborah Davis (Katharine
the Great): "By the early 1950s, Wisner 'owned' respected
members of the New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications
vehicles."
In
1951 Allen W. Dulles persuaded Cord
Meyer to join the CIA. However, there is evidence that he was
recruited several years earlier and had been spying on the liberal
organizations he had been a member of in the later 1940s. According
to Deborah Davis, Meyer became Mockingbird's
"principal operative".
One
of the most important journalists under the control of Operation Mockingbird
was Joseph Alsop, whose articles appeared
in over 300 different newspapers. Other
journalists willing to promote the views of the CIA included Stewart
Alsop (New York Herald Tribune),
Ben
Bradlee (Newsweek),
James Reston (New
York Times), Charles Douglas Jackson
(Time Magazine), Walter Pincus (Washington
Post), William C. Baggs (Miami
News), Herb Gold (Miami News)
and Charles Bartlett (Chattanooga Times).
According to Nina
Burleigh (A Very Private Woman)
these
journalists sometimes wrote articles that were commissioned by Frank
Wisner.
The CIA also provided them with classified information to help them
with their work.
After
1953 the network was overseen by Allen W.
Dulles, director of the Central Intelligence
Agency. By this time Operation Mockingbird had a major influence
over 25 newspapers and wire agencies. These organizations were run
by people with well-known right-wing views such as William
Paley (CBS), Henry Luce (Time
Magazine and Life Magazine),
Arthur Hays Sulzberger (New
York Times), Alfred Friendly
(managing editor of the Washington Post),
Jerry O'Leary (Washington Star),
Hal Hendrix (Miami News), Barry
Bingham Sr., (Louisville Courier-Journal),
James Copley (Copley News Services) and Joseph Harrison (Christian
Science Monitor).
The Office
of Policy Coordination (OPC) was funded by siphoning of funds intended
for the Marshall Plan. Some of this
money was used to bribe journalists and publishers.
Frank
Wisner
was constantly looked for ways to help convince the public of the
dangers of communism. In 1954 Wisner arranged for the funding the
Hollywood production of Animal Farm,
the animated allegory based on the book written by George
Orwell.
According
to Alex Constantine (Mockingbird:
The Subversion Of The Free Press By The CIA), in the 1950s,
"some 3,000 salaried and contract CIA employees were eventually
engaged in propaganda efforts". Wisner was also able to restrict
newspapers from reporting about certain events. For example, the CIA
plots to overthrow the governments of Iran and Guatemala.
Thomas
Braden,
head of the of International Organizations
Division (IOD), played an important role in Operation Mockingbird.
Many years later he revealed his role in these events: "If the
director of CIA wanted to extend a present, say, to someone in Europe
- a Labour leader - suppose he just thought, This man can use fifty
thousand dollars, he's working well and doing a good job - he could
hand it to him and never have to account to anybody... There was simply
no limit to the money it could spend and no limit to the people it
could hire and no limit to the activities it could decide were necessary
to conduct the war - the secret war.... It was a multinational. Maybe
it was one of the first. Journalists
were a target, labor unions a particular target - that was one of
the activities in which the communists spent the most money."
In August,
1952, the Office of Policy Coordination and the Office of Special
Operations (the espionage division) were merged to form the Directorate
of Plans (DPP). Frank
Wisner
became head of this new organization and Richard
Helms became his chief of operations. Mockingbird was now the
responsibility of the DPP.
J.
Edgar Hoover
became jealous of the CIA's growing power.
He
described the OPC as "Wisner's gang of weirdos" and began
carrying out investigations into their past. It did not take him long
to discover that some of them had been active in left-wing politics
in the 1930s. This information was passed to who started making attacks
on members of the OPC. Hoover also gave McCarthy details of an affair
that Frank
Wisner
had with
Princess Caradja in Romania during the
war. Hoover, claimed that Caradja was a Soviet agent.
Joseph
McCarthy also began accusing other senior members of the CIA as
being security risks. McCarthy claimed that the CIA was a "sinkhole
of communists" and claimed he intended to root out a hundred
of them. One of his first targets was Cord
Meyer, who was
still working for Operation Mockingbird.
In
August, 1953, Richard
Helms,
Wisner's deputy at the OPC, told Meyer that Joseph
McCarthy had accused him of being a communist. The Federal
Bureau of Investigation added to the smear by announcing it was
unwilling to give Meyer "security clearance". However, the
FBI refused to explain what evidence they had against Meyer. Allen
W. Dulles
and both came to his defence
and refused to permit a FBI interrogation of Meyer.
Joseph
McCarthy did not realise what he was taking on. Wisner unleashed
Mockingbird on McCarthy. Drew Pearson,
Joe Alsop, Jack
Anderson, Walter Lippmann and Ed
Murrow all went into attack mode and McCarthy was permanently
damaged by the press coverage orchestrated by Wisner.
Mockingbird
was very active during the overthrow of Jacobo
Arbenz in Guatemala. People like Henry
Luce
was able to censor stories that appeared too sympathetic towards the
plight of Arbenz. Allen W.
Dulles was even able to keep left-wing journalists from
travelling to Guatemala. This including Sydney Gruson of the New
York Times.
In 1955
President Dwight Eisenhower established
the 5412 Committee in order to keep a check on the CIA's covert activities.
The committee (also called the Special Group) included the CIA director,
the national security adviser, and the deputy secretaries at State
and Defence and had the responsibility to decide whether covert actions
were "proper" and in the national interest. It was also
decided to include Richard
B. Russell, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
However, as Allen W. Dulles
was later to admit, because of "plausible deniability" planned
covert actions were not referred to the 5412 Committee.
Dwight
Eisenhower became concerned about CIA covert activities and in
1956 appointed David
Bruce as a member of the President's Board
of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities (PBCFIA). Eisenhower
asked Bruce to write a report on the CIA. It was presented to Eisenhower
on 20th December, 1956. Bruce argued that the CIA's covert actions
were "responsible in great measure for stirring up the turmoil
and raising the doubts about us that exists in many countries in the
world today." Bruce was also highly critical of Mockingbird.
He argued: "what right have we to go barging around in other
countries buying newspapers and handling money to opposition parties
or supporting a candidate for this, that, or the other office."
After Richard
Bissell lost his post as Director of Plans in 1962, Tracy
Barnes took over the running of Mockingbird. According to Evan
Thomas (The Very Best Men)
Barnes planted editorials about political candidates who were regarded
as pro-CIA.
In 1963,
John
McCone,
the director of the CIA, discovered
that Random House intended to publish Invisible
Government by David Wise and
Thomas Ross. McCone
discovered that the book intended to look at his
links with the Military
Industrial Congress Complex. The
authors also
claimed that the CIA was having a major influence on American foreign
policy. This included the overthrow of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran
(1953) and Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala
(1954). The book also covered the role that the CIA played in the
Bay of Pigs operation, the attempts
to remove President Sukarno in Indonesia and the covert operations
taking place in Laos and Vietnam.
John
McCone
called in Wise and Ross to demand deletions on the basis of galleys
the CIA had secretly obtained from Random House. The authors refused
to made these changes and Random House decided to go ahead and publish
the book. The CIA considered buying up the
entire printing of Invisible Government
but this idea was rejected when Random House pointed out that if this
happened they would have to print a second edition. McCone now formed
a special group to deal with the book and tried to arrange for it
to get bad reviews.
Invisible
Government was published in 1964. It was the first full
account of America's intelligence and espionage apparatus. In the
book Wise and Ross argued that the "Invisible Government is made
up of many agencies and people, including the intelligence branches
of the State and Defense Departments, of the Army, Navy and Air Force".
However, they claimed that the most important organization involved
in this process was the CIA.
John
McCone
also attempted to stop Edward Yates from making a documentary on the
CIA for the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). This attempt at censorship
failed and NBC went ahead and broadcast this critical documentary.
In June,
1965, Desmond FitzGerald was appointed
as head of the Directorate for Plans. He now took charge of Mockingbird.
At the end of 1966 FitzGerald discovered that Ramparts,
a left-wing publication, was planning to publish that the CIA had
been secretly funding the National Student Association. FitzGerald
ordered Edgar Applewhite to organize a campaign against the magazine.
Applewhite later told Evan Thomas
for his book, The Very Best
Men: "I had all sorts of dirty tricks to hurt their
circulation and financing. The people running Ramparts were vulnerable
to blackmail. We had awful things in mind, some of which we carried
off."
This
dirty tricks campaign failed to stop Ramparts
publishing this story in March, 1967. The article, written by Sol
Stern, was entitled NSA and the CIA.
As well as reporting CIA funding of the National
Student Association it exposed the whole system of anti-Communist
front organizations in Europe, Asia, and South America. It named Cord
Meyer as a key
figure in this campaign. This included the funding of the literary
journal Encounter.
In
May 1967 Thomas
Braden
responded
to this by publishing an article entitled, I'm
Glad the CIA is Immoral, in the Saturday
Evening Post, where he defended the activities of the
International Organizations Division unit of the CIA.
Braden also confessed
that the activities of the CIA had to be
kept secret from Congress. As he pointed out in the article: "In
the early 1950s, when the cold war was really hot, the idea that Congress
would have approved many of our projects was about as likely as the
John Birch Society's approving Medicare."
Meyer's role in Operation
Mockingbird was further exposed in 1972 when he was accused of interfering
with the publication of a book, The Politics
of Heroin in Southeast Asia by Alfred W. McCoy. The book
was highly critical of the CIA's dealings with the drug traffic in
Southeast Asia. The publisher, who leaked the story, had been a former
colleague of Meyer's when he was a liberal activist after the war.
Further
details of Operation Mockingbird was revealed as a result of the Frank
Church investigations (Select Committee to Study Governmental
Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities) in 1975. According
to the Congress report published in 1976: "The
CIA currently maintains a network of several hundred foreign individuals
around the world who provide intelligence for the CIA and at times
attempt to influence opinion through the use of covert propaganda.
These individuals provide the CIA with direct access to a large number
of newspapers and periodicals, scores of press services and news agencies,
radio and television stations, commercial book publishers, and other
foreign media outlets." Church
argued that the cost of misinforming the world cost American taxpayers
an estimated $265 million a year.
Frank Church showed that it was CIA policy to use clandestine handling of journalists and authors to get information published initially in the foreign media in order to get it disseminated in the United States. Church quotes from one document written by the Chief of the Covert Action Staff on how this process worked (page 193). For example, he writes: “Get books published or distributed abroad without revealing any U.S. influence, by covertly subsidizing foreign publicans or booksellers.” Later in the document he writes: “Get books published for operational reasons, regardless of commercial viability”. Church goes onto report that “over a thousand books were produced, subsidized or sponsored by the CIA before the end of 1967”. All these books eventually found their way into the American market-place. Either in their original form (Church gives the example of the Penkovskiy Papers) or repackaged as articles for American newspapers and magazines.
In another document published in 1961 the Chief of the Agency’s propaganda unit wrote: “The advantage of our direct contact with the author is that we can acquaint him in great detail with our intentions; that we can provide him with whatever material we want him to include and that we can check the manuscript at every stage… (the Agency) must make sure the actual manuscript will correspond with our operational and propagandistic intention.”
Church quotes Thomas H. Karamessines as saying: “If you plant an article in some paper overseas, and it is a hard-hitting article, or a revelation, there is no way of guaranteeing that it is not going to be picked up and published by the Associated Press in this country” (page 198).
By analyzing CIA documents Church was able to identify over 50 U.S. journalists who were employed directly by the Agency. He was aware that there were a lot more who enjoyed a very close relationship with the CIA who were “being paid regularly for their services, to those who receive only occasional gifts and reimbursements from the CIA” (page 195).
Church pointed out that this was probably only the tip of the iceberg because the CIA refused to “provide the names of its media agents or the names of media organizations with which they are connected” (page 195). Church was also aware that most of these payments were not documented. This was the main point of the Otis Pike Report. If these payments were not documented and accounted for, there must be a strong possibility of financial corruption taking place. This includes the large commercial contracts that the CIA was responsible for distributing. Pike’s report actually highlighted in 1976 what eventually emerged in the 1980s via the activities of CIA operatives such as Edwin Wilson, Thomas Clines, Ted Shackley, Raphael Quintero, Richard Secord and Felix Rodriguez.
Church also identified E. Howard Hunt as an important figure in Operation Mockingbird. He points out how Hunt arranged for books to be reviewed by certain writers in the national press. He gives the example of how Hunt arranged for a “CIA writer under contract” to write a hostile review of a Edgar Snow book in the New York Times (page 198).
Church comes up with this conclusion to his examination of this issue: “In examining the CIA’s past and present use of the U.S. media, the Committee finds two reasons for concern. The first is the potential, inherent in covert media operations, for manipulating or incidentally misleading the American public. The second is the damage to the credibility and independence of a free press which may be caused by covert relationships with the U.S. journalists and media organizations.”
In February,
1976, George Bush, the recently appointed
Director of the CIA announced a new policy: �Effective immediately,
the CIA will not enter into any paid or contract relationship with
any full-time or part-time news correspondent accredited by any U.S.
news service, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network or
station.� However, he added that the CIA would continue to �welcome� the voluntary, unpaid cooperation of journalists.
Carl
Bernstein, who had worked with Bob Woodward
in the investigation of Watergate,
provided further information about Operation Mockingbird in an article
in Rolling Stone in October, 1977.
Bernstein claimed that over a 25 year period over 400 American journalists
secretly carried out assignments for the CIA:
"Some
of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters
who considered themselves ambassadors-without-portfolio for their
country. Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found
that their association with the Agency helped their work; stringers
and freelancers who were as interested it the derring-do of the spy
business as in filing articles, and, the smallest category, full-time
CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad."
It is almost certain that
Bernstein had encountered Operation Mockingbird while working on his
Watergate investigation. For example, Deborah
Davis (Katharine the Great)
has argued that Deep Throat was senior CIA official, Richard
Ober, who was running Operation Chaos for Richard
Nixon during this period.
According to researchers
such as Steve Kangas, Angus
Mackenzie and
Alex Constantine,
Operation Mockingbird was not closed down by the CIA in 1976. For
example, in 1998 Kangas argued that CIA
asset Richard Mellon Scaife ran "Forum World Features, a foreign
news service used as a front to disseminate CIA propaganda around
the world."
On 8th February, 1999,
Kangas was found dead in the bathroom of the Pittsburgh offices of
Richard Mellon Scaife. He had been shot in the head. Officially
he had committed suicide but some people believe he was murdered.
In
an article in Salon Magazine,
(19th March, 1999) Andrew Leonard asked: "Why
did the police report say the gun wound was to the left of his head,
while the autopsy reported a wound on the roof of his mouth? Why had
the hard drive on his computer been erased shortly after his death?
Why had Scaife assigned his No. 1 private detective, Rex Armistead,
to look into Kangas' past?"
Open
Debate on the Kennedy Assassination
Debate on Operation Mockingbird
Forum Debate on Watergate
�
(1)
Thomas
Braden,
Saturday
Evening Post (20th May,
1967)
In the early
1950s, when the cold war was really hot, the idea that Congress would
have approved many of our (CIA) projects was about as likely as the
John Birch Society's approving Medicare.
�
(2)
John
Playford, Political
Scientists and the CIA, Australian Left Review (1968)
The role of US trade unions
and student bodies in Cold War, projects inspired and financed by
the huge, international agency of subversion known as the Central
Intelligence Agency, is now widely known in Australia. Far less publicity
has been given to the ties that were shown to exist between the CIA
and the US Information Agency (USIA), the propaganda arm of the US
government, while nothing at all has appeared in the press on the
links revealed between the USIA and Dr. Evron M. Kirkpatrick, Executive
Director of the prestigious American Political Science Association
(APSA), which has a membership of about 16,000. 4 Before being appointed
the first full-time Executive Director of APSA in 1954, Kirkpatrick
held a succession of senior posts in the State Department: Chief of
the External Research Staff 1948-52, Chief of the Psychological Intelligence
and Research Staff 1952-54, and Deputy Director of the Office of Intelligence
Research 1954. In 1956 he edited Target: The World Communist Propaganda
Activities in 1955, which was published by the Macmillan Co. of New
York. In the Preface, he drew attention to the fact that the US Government
had devoted systematic attention to research on Communist propaganda: �Many social scientists are aware of the work the government
is doing and have seen some of its results; many have participated
in it. The present volume has been made possible only by drawing upon
this government research, and it is the product, therefore, of the
work of many people.� In the following year, Kirkpatrick edited
and Macmillan published a companion volume entitled Year of Crisis
- Communist Propaganda Activities in 1956. Both works bear all the
earmarks of a USIA operation...
Kirkpatrick has also been
President of Operations and Policy Research, Inc. (OPR) since its
formation in 1955. A non-profit research organisation set up by a
group of social Scientists, lawyers and businessmen to help the USIA
distribute more persuasive and polished literature both in the US
and abroad, OPR reads and gives expert opinion on books which USIA
then plants with publishers, without the sponsorship being publicized.
It employed on a part-time basis, according to Kirkpatrick, more than
a hundred social scientists, many of them members of APSA. Sol Stern
has correctly summed up OPR as �a Cold War-oriented strategy
organization.�
Kirkpatrick�s wife,
Mrs. Jean J. Kirkpatrick, is a staff member of Trinity College in
Washington DC, a Catholic women�s college conducted by the Sisters
of Notre Dame de Namur. From 1951 to 1953 she had been an intelligence
research analyst in the State Department, and since 1956 she has been
a consultant to OPR. Mrs. Kirkpatrick has also had close connections
with the USIA. She edited and wrote the introductory essay for The
Strategy of Deception: A Study in World-Wide Communist Tactics, which
was published in 1963 by Farrar, Straus and Co. of New York, and made
a �special alternate selection� by the Book-of-the-Month
Club. At no time was it mentioned that the USIA subsidised the book�s
creation. The USIA described its venture into covert publishing as
the �book development program,� of which the USIA official
then in charge of it, Reed Harris, stated in testimony before the
House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee in March 1964:
This is a program under
which we can have books written to our own specifications, books that
would not otherwise be put out, especially those books that have strong
anti-communist content, and follow other themes that are particularly
useful for our program. Under the book development program, we control
the thing from the very idea down to the final edited manuscript.
Subsequently, the Director
of the USIA, Leonard Marks, appeared before the same body in September
1966 and was asked why it was wrong �to let the American people
know when they buy and read the book that it was developed under government
sponsorship?� His reply was straight to the point: �It minimises
their value.�
The USIA did not pay Farrar,
Straus; it paid $US 16,500 to The New Leader, whose editor, the late
S. M. Levitas, conceived of the book and sold the idea to the USIA.
A liberal militantly anti-Communist journal, The New Leader was for
more than thirty years under the editorship of Levitas, �a bitter
anti-Communist out of the East European Socialist tradition�
who died in 1961. In recent years, The New Leader has lost much of
the blind anti-Communism which allowed it to accept too readily the
positions of the �China Lobby� and the �Vietnam Lobby.�
�
(3)
Nina
Burleigh,
A Very Private Woman: The Life and Unsolved Murder of Presidential
Mistress Mary Meyer (1998)
The social connections
with journalists were a crucial part of the CIA's propaganda machine.
Chief among CIA friends were the Alsop brothers. Joseph Alsop wrote
a column with his brother Stewart for the New York Herald Tribune
and they occasionally penned articles at the suggestion of Frank Wisner,
based upon classified information leaked to them. In exchange, they
provided CIA friends with observations gathered on trips abroad. Such
give-and-take was not unusual among the Georgetown set in the 1950s.
The CIA also made friends with Washington Post publisher Phil
Graham, Post managing editor Alfred Friendly, and
New York Times Washington bureau chief James Reston,
whose next-door neighbor was Frank Wisner. Ben Bradlee, while working
for the State Department as a press attache in the American embassy
in Paris, produced propaganda regarding the Rosenbergs' spying conviction
and death sentence in cooperation with the CIA... Some
newspaper executives - Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher of the New
York Times, among them - actually signed secrecy agreements with
the CIA...
When Carl Bernstein reported
that one CIA official had called Stewart Alsop a CIA agent, Joe Alsop
defended his brother to Bernstein, saying: "I dare say he did
perform some tasks-he just did the correct things as an American....
The Founding Fathers (of the CIA) were close personal friends of ours....
It was a social thing, my dear fellow."
Cord Meyer developed and
nurtured his own friendships among journalists. He seconded the nomination
of Washington Post writer Walter Pincus for membership in the Waltz
Group, a Washington social organization. Pincus went on to become
the Post's premier intelligence reporter. Cord also maintained friendly
ties with William C. Baggs of the Miami News and foreign-affairs writer
Herb Gold. Cord's ties to academia served him when he needed favors
from publishers and journalists. In some accounts, he and Time writer
C. D. Jackson together recruited Steinem. According to his journal,
Cord dined at the Paris home of American novelist James Jones. He
was also close to Chattanooga Times writer Charles Bartlett throughout
his life.
�
(4)
Thomas
Braden,
interview included in the Granada Television program, World in
Action: The Rise and Fall of the CIA (June, 1975)
It never had
to account for the money it spent except to the President if the President
wanted to know how much money it was spending. But otherwise the funds
were not only unaccountable, they were unvouchered, so there was really
no means of checking them - "unvouchered funds" meaning
expenditures that don't have to be accounted for.... If the director
of CIA wanted to extend a present, say, to someone in Europe - a Labour
leader - suppose he just thought, This man can use fifty thousand
dollars, he's working well and doing a good job - he could hand it
to him and never have to account to anybody... I don't mean to imply
that there were a great many of them that were handed out as Christmas
presents. They were handed out for work well performed or in order
to perform work well.... Politicians in Europe, particularly right
after the war, got a lot of money from the CIA....
Since it was
unaccountable, it could hire as many people as it wanted. It never
had to say to any committee - no committee said to it - "You
can only have so many men." It could do exactly as it pleased.
It made preparations therefore for every contingency. It could hire
armies; it could buy banks. There was simply no limit to the money
it could spend and no limit to the people it could hire and no limit
to the activities it could decide were necessary to conduct the war
- the secret war.... It was a multinational. Maybe it was one of the
first.
Journalists
were a target, labor unions a particular target - that was one of
the activities in which the communists spent the most money. They
set up a successful communist labor union in France right after the
war. We countered it with Force Ouvriere. They set up this very successful
communist labor union in Italy, and we countered it with another union....
We had a vast project targeted on the intellectuals - "the battle
for Picasso's mind," if you will. The communists set up fronts
which they effectively enticed a great many particularly the French
intellectuals to join. We tried to set up a counterfront. (This was
done through funding of social and cultural organizations such as
the Pan-American Foundation, the International Marketing Institute,
the International Development Foundation, the American Society of
African Culture, and the Congress of Cultural Freedom.) I think the
budget for the Congress of Cultural Freedom one year that I had charge
of it was about $800,000, $900,000, which included, of course, the
subsidy for the Congress's magazine, Encounter. That doesn't mean
that everybody that worked for Encounter or everybody who wrote for
Encounter knew anything about it. Most of the people who worked for
Encounter and all but one of the men who ran it had no idea that it
was paid for by the CIA.
�
(5)
Angus
Mackenzie,
Secrets:
The CIA War at Home (1997)
Following the buildup of
U.S. troops in Vietnam and the assassination of Diem, Sheinbaum decided
it was his patriotic duty to publicize information that he hoped might
put the brakes on U.S. involvement. Writing about the connections
between Michigan State University, the CIA, and the Saigon police
(with the help of Robert Scheer, a young investigative reporter),
the Sheinbaum story was to appear in the June 1966 issue of Ramparts
magazine. The article disposed that Michigan State University had
been secretly used by the CIA to train Saigon police and to keep an
inventory of ammunition for grenade launchers, Browning automatic
rifles, and .50 caliber machine guns, as well as to write the South
Vietnamese constitution. The problem, in Sheinbaum's view, was that
such secret funding of academics to execute government programs undercut
scholarly integrity. When scholars are forced into a conflict of interest,
he wrote, "where is the source of serious intellectual criticism
that would help us avoid future Vietnams?"
Word of Sheinbaum's forthcoming
article caused consternation on the seventh floor of CIA headquarters.
On April 18, 1966, Director of Central Intelligence William F. Raborn
Jr. notified his director of security that he wanted a "run down"
on Ramparts magazine on a "high priority basis." This strongly
worded order would prove to be a turning point for the Agency. To
"run down" a domestic news publication because it had exposed
questionable practices of the CIA was clearly in violation of the
1947 National Security Act's prohibition on domestic operations and
meant the CIA eventually would have to engage in a cover-up. The CIA
director of security, Howard J. Osborn, was also told: "The Director
[Raborn] is particularly interested in the authors of the article,
namely, Stanley Sheinbaum and Robert Scheer. He is also interested
in any other individuals who worked for the magazine."
Word of Sheinbaum's forthcoming
article caused consternation on the seventh floor of CIA headquarters.
On April 18, 1966, Director of Central Intelligence William F. Raborn
Jr. notified his director of security that he wanted a "run down"
on Ramparts magazine on a "high priority basis." This strongly
worded order would prove to be a turning point for the Agency. To
"run down" a domestic news publication because it had exposed
questionable practices of the CIA was clearly in violation of the
1947 National Security Act's prohibition on domestic operations and
meant the CIA eventually would have to engage in a cover-up. The CIA
director of security, Howard J. Osborn, was also told: "The Director
[Raborn] is particularly interested in the authors of the article,
namely, Stanley Sheinbaum and Robert Scheer. He is also interested
in any other individuals who worked for the magazine."
Osborn's deputies had just
two days to prepare a special briefing on Ramparts for the director.
By searching existing CIA files they were able to assemble dossiers
on approximately twenty-two of the fifty-five Ramparts writers and
editors, which itself indicates the Agency's penchant for collecting
information on American critics of government policies. Osborn was
able to tell Raborn that Ramparts had grown from a Catholic lay journal
into a publication with a staff of more than fifty people in New York,
Paris, and Munich, including two active members of the U.S. Communist
Party. The most outspoken of the CIA critics at the magazine was not
a Communist but a former Green Beret veteran, Donald Duncan. Duncan
had written, according to then CIA Deputy Director Richard Helms,
"We will continue to be in danger as long as the CIA is deciding
policy and manipulating nations." Of immediate concern to Raborn,
however, was Osborn's finding that Sheinbaum was in the process of
exposing more CIA domestic organizations. The investigation of Ramparts
was to be intensified, Raborn told Osborn.
At the same time, Helms
passed information to President Lyndon Johnson's aide, William D.
Moyers, about the plans of two Ramparts editors to run for Congress
on an antiwar platform. Within days, the CIA had progressed from investigating
a news publication to sending domestic political intelligence to the
White House, just as a few members of Congress had feared nineteen
years earlier.
Upon publication, Sheinbaum's
article triggered a storm of protests from academicians and legislators
across the country who saw the CIA's infiltration of a college campus
as a threat to academic freedom. The outcry grew so loud that President
Johnson felt he had to make a reassuring public statement and establish
a task force to review any government activities that might endanger
the integrity of the educational community. The task force was a collection
of political statesmen--such as Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach
and Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare John Gardner--but
also included Richard Helms, the CIA official who himself had been
dealing in political espionage. The purpose of the task force, it
soon became clear, was to forestall further embarrassment and preclude
any congressional investigation of CIA operations. Helms, furthermore,
organized an internal task force of directorate chiefs to examine
all CIA relationships with academic institutions but that review,
from all appearances, was designed only to ensure that these operations
remained secret...
Meanwhile, CIA officers
spent April and May of 1966 identifying the source of Ramparts's money.
Their target was executive editor Warren Hinckle, the magazine's chief
fund-raiser and a man easy to track. He wore a black patch over one
eye and made no secret of the difficult state of the magazine's finances
as he continually begged a network of rich donors for operating funds.
The agents also reported that Hinckle had launched a $2.5 million
lawsuit against Alabama Governor George Wallace for calling the magazine
pro-Communist (information that Osborn dutifully passed on to Raborn).
The real point of the CIA investigation, however, was to place Ramparts
reporters under such dose surveillance that any CIA officials involved
in domestic operations would have time to rehearse cover stories before
the reporters arrived to question them.
Next, Raborn broadened
the scope of his investigation of Ramparts's staff by recruiting help
from other agencies. On June 16, 1966, he ordered Osborn to "urge"
the FBI to "investigate these people as a subversive unit."
Osborn forwarded this request to the FBI, expressing the CIA's interest
in anything the FBI might develop "of a derogatory nature."
One CIA officer, who later inspected the CIA file of the Ramparts
investigation, said that the Agency was trying to find a way of shutting
down the magazine that would stand up in court, notwithstanding the
constraints of the First Amendment...
On March 4, 1967, Richard
Ober got a report from a person who attended a Ramparts staff meeting
at which magazine reporters had discussed their interviews of high
executive branch government officials and their attempts to meet with
White House staff members. Now Ober knew who was saying what to whom.
Three days later, Ober's task force found out that a Ramparts reporter
was going to interview a CIA "asset": that is, someone under
CIA control. In preparation, CIA officers told the asset how to handle
the reporter, and after the interview the asset reported back to the
CIA.
On March 16, two of Ober's
men drove from CIA headquarters to a nearby airport to pick up a CIA
agent who was a good friend of a Ramparts reporter. They went to a
hotel, where the CIA agent was debriefed. Then the agent and his case
officers reviewed his cover story, which he went on to tell his Ramparts
contact as a means of obtaining more information. During the same
period Ober was trying to recruit five former Ramparts employees as
informants. "Maybe they were unhappy," a CIA agent would
later explain. On April 4, Ober completed a status report on his Ramparts
task force. His men had identified and investigated 127 Ramparts writers
and researchers, as well as nearly 200 other American civilians with
some link to the magazine.
Three more CIA officers
joined Ober's team, bringing to twelve the number of full-time or
part-time officers coordinating intelligence and operations on Ramparts
at the headquarters level. On April 5, 1967, the task force completed
its tentative assessment and recommendations, setting forth future
actions--which, the CIA was still insisting in 1994, cannot be released
under the Freedom of Information Act. CIA officer Louis Dube described
the recommendations as "heady shit" but refused to be more
specific.
It is known that Ober became
fascinated with Ramparts advertisers. "One of our officers was
in contact with a source who provided us with information about Ramparts's
advertising," Dube admitted. On April 28, a CIA analyst working
for Ober tried to learn if the CIA had any friends who might have
influence with Ramparts advertisers, apparently with the intention
of getting them to drop their accounts.
�
(6)
Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Government Operations
With Respect to Intelligence Activities (April, 1976)
The Covert
Use of Books and Publishing Houses: The Committee has found that the
Central Intelligence Agency attaches a particular importance to book
publishing activities as a form of covert propaganda. A former officer
in the Clandestine Service stated that books are "the most important
weapon of strategic (long-range) propaganda." Prior to 1967,
the Central Intelligence Agency sponsored, subsidized, or produced
over 1,000 books; approximately 25 percent of them in English. In
1967 alone, the CIA published or subsidized over 200 books, ranging
from books on African safaris and wildlife to translations of Machiavelli's
The Prince into Swahili and works of T. S. Eliot into Russian, to
a competitor to Mao's little red book, which was entitled Quotations
from Chairman Liu.
The Committee
found that an important number of the books actually produced by the
Central Intelligence Agency were reviewed and marketed in the United
States:
* A book
about a young student from a developing country who had studied in
a communist country was described by the CIA as "developed by
(two areas divisions) and, produced by the Domestic Operations Division...
and has had a high impact in the United States as well as in the (foreign
area) market." This book, which was produced by the European
outlet of a United States publishing house was published in condensed
form in two major U.S. magazines."
* Another
CIA book, The Penkorsky Papers, was published in United States in
1965. The book was prepared and written by omitting agency assets
who drew on actual case materials and publication rights to the manuscript
were sold to the publisher through a trust fund which was established
for the purpose. The publisher was unaware of any US Government interest.
In 1967,
the CIA stopped publishing within the United States. Since then, the
Agency has published some 250 books abroad, most of them in foreign
languages. The CIA has given special attention to publication and
circulation abroad of books about conditions in the Soviet Bloc. Of
those targeted at audiences outside the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe,
a large number has also been available in English.
Domestic
"Fallout": The Committee finds that covert media operations
can result in manipulating or incidentally misleading the American
public. Despite efforts to minimize it, CIA employees, past and present,
have conceded that there is no way to shield the American public completely
from "fallout" in the United States from Agency propaganda
or placements overseas. Indeed, following the Katzenbach inquiry,
the Deputy Director for Operations issued a directive stating: "Fallout
in the United States from a foreign publication which we support is
inevitable and consequently permissible."
The domestic
fallout of covert propaganda comes from many sources: books intended
primarily for an English-speaking foreign audience; CIA press placements
that are picked up by an international wire service; and publications
resulting from direct CIA funding of foreign institutes. For example,
a book written for an English-speaking foreign audience by one CIA
operative was reviewed favorably by another CIA agent in the New York
Times. The Committee also found that the CIA helped create and support
various Vietnamese periodicals and publications. In at least one instance,
a CIA supported Vietnamese publication was used to propagandize the
American public and the members and staff of both houses of Congress.
So effective was this propaganda that some members quoted from the
publication in debating the controversial question of United States
involvement in Vietnam.
The Committee
found that this inevitable domestic fallout was compounded when the
Agency circulated its subsidized books in the United States prior
to their distribution abroad in order to induce a favorable reception
overseas.
The Covert
Use of 11.5. Journalists and Media Institutions on, February 11, 1976,
CIA Director George Bush announced new guidelines governing the Agency's
relationship with United States media organizations: "Effective
immediately, CIA will not enter into any paid or contractual relationship
with any full-time or part-time news correspondent accredited by any
U.S. news service, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network
or station."
Agency
officials who testified after the February 11, 1976, announcement
told the Committee that the prohibition extends to non-Americans accredited
to specific United States media organizations.
The CIA
currently maintains a network of several hundred foreign individuals
around the world who provide intelligence for the CIA and at times
attempt to influence opinion through the use of covert propaganda.
These individuals provide the CIA with direct access to a large number
of newspapers and periodicals, scores of press services and news agencies,
radio and television stations, commercial book publishers, and other
foreign media outlets.
Approximately
50 of the assets are individual American journalists or employees
of US media organizations. Of these, fewer than half are "accredited"
by US media organizations and thereby affected by the new prohibitions
on the use of accredited newsmen. The remaining individuals are non-accredited
freelance contributors and media representatives abroad, and thus
are not affected by the new CIA prohibition.
More than
a dozen United States news organizations and commercial publishing
houses formerly provided cover for CIA agents abroad. A few of these
organizations were unaware that they provided this cover.
The Committee
notes that the new CIA prohibitions do not apply to "unaccredited"
Americans serving in media organizations such as representatives of
US media organizations abroad or freelance writers. Of the more than
50 CIA relationships with United States journalists, or employees
in American media organizations, fewer than one half will be terminated
under the new CIA guidelines.
The Committee
is concerned that the use of American :journalists and media organizations
for clandestine operations is a threat to the integrity of the press.
All American journalists, whether accredited to a United States news
organization or just a stringer, may be suspects when any are engaged
in covert activities.
�
(7) Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Government Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities (April, 1976)
In examining the CIA’s past and present use of the U.S. media, the Committee finds two reasons for concern. The first is the potential, inherent in covert media operations, for manipulating or incidentally misleading the American public. The second is the damage to the credibility and independence of a free press which may be caused by covert relationships with the U.S. journalists and media organizations.
�
(8)
Alex
Constantine,
Mockingbird:
The Subversion Of The Free Press By The CIA (2000)
It was conceived in the late 1940s, the most frigid
period of the cold war, when the CIA began a systematic infiltration
of the corporate media, a process that often included direct takeover
of major news outlets.
In this period, the American intelligence services competed with communist
activists abroad to influence European labor unions. With or without
the cooperation of local governments, Frank Wisner, an undercover
State Department official assigned to the Foreign Service, rounded
up students abroad to enter the cold war underground of covert
operations on behalf of his Office of Policy Coordination. Philip
Graham,a graduate of the Army Intelligence School in Harrisburg, PA,
then publisher of the Washington Post, was taken under Wisner's wing
to direct the program code-named Mockingbird...
"World War III has begun," Henry's Luce's Life declared
in March, 1947. "It is in the opening skirmish stage already."
The issue featured an excerpt of a book by James Burnham, who called
for the creation of an "American Empire," "world-dominating
in political power, set up at least in part through coercion (probably
including war, but certainly the threat of war) and in which one group
of people ... would hold more than its equal share of power."
George Seldes, the famed anti-fascist media critic, drew down on Luce
in 1947, explaining that "although avoiding typical Hitlerian
phrases, the same doctrine of a superior people taking over the world
and ruling it, began to appear in the press, whereas the organs of
Wall Street were much more honest in favoring a doctrine inevitably
leading to war if it brought greater commercial markets under the
American flag."
On the domestic front, an abiding relationship was struck between
the CIA and William Paley, a wartime colonel and the founder of CBS.
A firm believer in "all forms of propaganda" to foster loyalty
to the Pentagon, Paley hired CIA agents to work undercover at the
behest of his close friend, the busy grey eminence of the nation's
media, Allen Dulles. Paley's designated go-between in his dealings
with the CIA was Sig Mickelson, president of CBS News from 1954 to
1961.
The CIA's assimilation of old guard fascists was overseen by the Operations
Coordination Board, directed by C.D. Jackson, formerly an executive
of Time magazine and Eisenhower's Special Assistant for Cold War Strategy.
In 1954 he was succeeded by Nelson Rockefeller, who quit a year later,
disgusted at the administration's political infighting. Vice President
Nixon succeeded Rockefeller as the key cold war strategist...
The commercialization of television, coinciding with Reagan's recruitment
by the Crusade for Freedom, a CIA front, presented the intelligence
world with unprecedented potential for sowing propaganda and even
prying in the age of Big Brother. George Orwell glimpsed the possibilities
when he installed omniscient video surveillance technology in 1948,
a novel rechristened 1984 for the first edition published in the U.S.
by Harcourt, Brace. Operation Octopus, according to federal files,
was in full swing by 1948, a surveillance program that turned any
television set with tubes into a broadcast transmitter. Agents of
Octopus could pick up audio and visual images with the equipment as
far as 25 miles away. Hale Boggs was investigating Operation Octopus
at the time of his disappearance in the midst of the Watergate probe...
In
the 1950s, outlays for global propaganda climbed to a full third of
the CIA's covert operations budget. Some 3,000 salaried and contract
CIA employees were eventually engaged in propaganda efforts. The cost
of disinforming the world cost American taxpayers an estimated $265
million a year by 1978, a budget larger than the combined expenditures
of Reuters, UPI and the AP news syndicates.
In 1977, the Copely News Service admitted that it worked closely with
the intelligence services - in fact, 23 employees were full-time employees
of the Agency.
�
(9)
Deborah Davis,
interviewed
by Kenn Thomas of Steamshovel Press (1992)
Kenn Thomas:
Let's get back to Ben Bradlee. I know part of what's in the book and
part of what upset those forces that caused the withdrawal of its
first publication is what you've said about Ben Bradlee and his connection
to the Ethyl and Julius Rosenberg trial. Would you talk about that
a bit?
Deborah Davis:
In the first edition, the one that was recalled and shredded, I looked
in State Department lists for '52 and '53 when Bradlee was serving
as a press attache supposedly in the American embassy in Paris. This
was during the Marshall Plan when the United States over in Europe
had hundreds of thousands of people making an intensive effort to
keep Western Europe from going Communist. Bradlee wanted to be part
of that effort. So he was over in the American embassy in Paris and
the embassy list had these letters after his name that said USIE.
And I asked the State Department what that meant and it said United
States Information Exchange. It was the forerunner of the USIA, the
United States Information Agency. It was the propaganda arm of the
embassy. They produced propaganda that was then disseminated by the
CIA all over Europe. They planted newspaper stories. They had a lot
of reporters on their payrolls. They routinely would produce stories
out of the embassy and give them to these reporters and they would
appear in the papers in Europe. It's very important to understand
how influential newspaper stories are to people because this is what
people think of as their essential source of facts about what is going
on. They don't question it, and even if they do question it they have
nowhere else to go to find out anything else. So Bradlee was involved
in producing this propaganda. But at that point in the story I didn't
know exactly what he was doing.
I published
the first book just saying that he worked for USIE and that this agency
produced propaganda for the CIA. He went totally crazy after the book
came out. One person who knew him told me then that he was going all
up and down the East Coast having lunch with every editor he could
think of saying that it was not true, he did not produce any propaganda.
And he attacked me viciously and he said that I had falsely accused
him of being a CIA agent. And the reaction was totally out of proportion
to what I had said.
Kenn Thomas:
You make a good point in the book that other people who have had similar
kinds of--I don't even know if you want to call them accusations--but
reports that they in some way cooperated with the CIA in the '5Os,
that the times were different and people were expected to do that
kind of thing out of a sense of patriotism and they blow it off.
Deborah Davis
: That's right. People say, yeah, this is what I did back then, you
know. But Bradlee doesn't want to be defined that way because, I don't
know, somehow he thinks it's just too revealing of him, of who he
is. He doesn't want to admit a true fact about his past because somehow
he doesn't want it known that this is where he came from. Because
this is the beginning of his journalistic career. This is how he made
it big.
Subsequent
to my book being shredded in 1979, early 1980, I got some documents
through the Freedom of Information Act and they revealed that Bradlee
had been the person who was running an entire propaganda operation
against Julius and Ethyl Rosenberg that covered forty countries on
four continents. He always claimed that he had been a low level press
flack in the embassy in Paris, just a press flack, nothing more. Julius
and Ethyl Rosenberg had already been convicted of being atomic spies
and they were on death row waiting to be executed. And the purpose
of Bradlee's propaganda operation was to convince the Europeans that
they really were spies, they really had given the secret of the atomic
bomb to the Russians and therefore they did deserve to be put to death.
The Europeans,
having just very few years before defeated Hitler, were very concerned
that the United States was going fascist the way their countries had.
And this was a very real fear to the Europeans. They saw the same
thing happening in the United States that had happened in their own
countries. And so Bradlee used the Rosenberg case to say, "No
this isn't what you think it is. These people really did this bad
thing and they really do deserve to die. It doesn't mean that the
United States is becoming fascist." So he had a very key role
in creating European public opinion and it was very, very important.
This was the key issue that was going to determine how the Europeans
felt about the United States.
Some of the
documents that I had showed him writing letters to the prosecutors
of the Rosenbergs saying "I'm working for the head of the CIA
in Paris and he wants me to come and look at your files." And
this kind of thing. So in the second edition, which came out in 1987,
I reprinted those documents, the actual documents, the readers can
see them and it's got his signature and it's very, very interesting.
He subsequently has said nothing about it at all. He won't talk about
it all. He won't answer any questions about it. So I guess the point
about Bradlee is that he went from this job to being European bureau
chief for Newsweek magazine and to the executive editorship of the
Post. So this is how he got where he is. It's very clear line of succession.
Philip Graham was Katharine Graham's husband, who ran the Post in
the '50s and he committed suicide in 1963. That's when Katharine Graham
took over. Bradlee was close friends with Allen Dulles and Phil Graham.
The paper wasn't doing very well for a while and he was looking for
a way to pay foreign correspondents and Allen Dulles was looking for
a cover. Allen Dulles was head of the CIA back then and he was looking
for a cover for some of his operatives so that they could get in and
out of places without arousing suspicion. So the two of them hit on
a plan: Allen Dulles would pay for the reporters and they would give
the CIA the information that they found as well as give it to the
Post. So he helped to develop this operation and it subsequently spread
to other newspapers and magazines. And it was called Operation Mockingbird.
This operation, I believe, was revealed for the first time in my book.
�
(10)
Evan
Thomas, The Very Best Men: The Early Years of the CIA
(1995)
He (Frank Wisner) considered his friends
Joe and Stewart Alsop to be reliable purveyors of the company line
in their columns, and he would not hesitate to call Cyrus Sulzberger,
the brother of the publisher of the New York Times. "You'd
be sitting there, and he'd be on the phone to Times Washington bureau
chief Scotty Reston explaining why some sentence in the paper was
entirely wrong. "I want that to go to Sulzberger!" he'd
say. He'd pick up newspapers and edit them from the CIA point of view,"
said Braden.
�
(11)
Deborah Davis, Katharine
the Great (1979)
The
Washington Post was in many ways like other "companies,"
as Walter Lippmann called the news organizations, fighting deadlines,
living uneasily with unions, suffering with "technical conditions
(that) do not favor genuine and productive debate." But the Post
was also unique among news companies in that its managers, living
and working in Washington, thought of themselves simultaneously as
journalists, businessmen, and patriots, a state of mind that made
them singularly able to expand the company while promoting the national
interest. Their individual relations with intelligence had in fact
been the reason that the Post Company had grown as fast as it did
after the war; their secrets were its corporate secrets, beginning
with MOCKINGBIRD. Philip Graham's commitment to intelligence gave
his friends Frank Wisner and Allen Dulles an interest in helping to
make the Washington Post the dominant news vehicle in Washington,
which they did by assisting with its two most crucial acquisitions,
the Times-Herald and WTOP. The Post men most essential to these transactions,
other than Phil, were Wayne Coy, the Post executive who had been Phil's
former New Deal boss, and John S. Hayes, who replaced Coy in 1947
when Coy was appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.
�
(12)
Mary Louise, Mockingbird:
CIA Media Manipulation (2003)
Starting
in the early days of the Cold War (late 40's), the CIA began a secret
project called Operation Mockingbird, with the intent of buying influence
behind the scenes at major media outlets and putting reporters on
the CIA payroll, which has proven to be a stunning ongoing success.
The CIA effort to recruit American news organizations and journalists
to become spies and disseminators of propaganda, was headed up by
Frank Wisner, Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, and Philip Graham (publisher
of The Washington Post). Wisner had taken Graham under his wing to
direct the program code-named Operation Mockingbird and both have
presumably committed suicide.
Media assets
will eventually include ABC, NBC, CBS, Time, Newsweek, Associated
Press, United Press International (UPI), Reuters, Hearst Newspapers,
Scripps-Howard, Copley News Service, etc. and 400 journalists, who
have secretly carried out assignments according to documents on file
at CIA headquarters, from intelligence-gathering to serving as go-betweens.
The CIA had infiltrated the nation's businesses, media, and universities
with tens of thousands of on-call operatives by the 1950's. CIA Director
Dulles had staffed the CIA almost exclusively with Ivy League graduates,
especially from Yale with figures like George Herbert Walker Bush
from the "Skull and Crossbones" Society.
Many Americans
still insist or persist in believing that we have a free press, while
getting most of their news from state-controlled television, under
the misconception that reporters are meant to serve the public. Reporters
are paid employees and serve the media owners, who usually cower when
challenged by advertisers or major government figures. Robert Parry
reported the first breaking stories about Iran-Contra for Associated
Press that were largely ignored by the press and congress, then moving
to Newsweek he witnessed a retraction of a true story for political
reasons. In 'Fooling America: A Talk by Robert Parry' he said, "The
people who succeeded and did well were those who didn't stand up,
who didn't write the big stories, who looked the other way when history
was happening in front of them, and went along either consciously
or just by cowardice with the deception of the American people."
Major networks
are primarily controlled by giant corporations that are obligated
by law, to put the profits of their investors ahead of all other considerations
which are often in conflict with the practice of responsible journalism.
There were around 50 corporations a couple of decades ago, which was
considered monopolistic by many and yet today, these companies have
become larger and fewer in number as the biggest ones absorb their
rivals. This concentration of ownership and power reduces the diversity
of media voices, as news falls into the hands of large conglomerates
with holdings in many industries that interferes in news gathering,
because of conflicts of interest. Mockingbird was an immense financial
undertaking with funds flowing from the CIA largely through the Congress
for Cultural Freedom (CCF) founded by Tom Braden with Pat Buchanon
of CNN's Crossfire.
Media corporations
share members of the board of directors with a variety of other large
corporations including banks, investment companies, oil companies,
health care, pharmaceutical, and technology companies. Until the 1980's,
media systems were generally domestically owned, regulated, and national
in scope. However, pressure from the IMF, World Bank, and US government
to deregulate and privatize, the media, communication, and new technology
resulted in a global commercial media system dominated by a small
number of super-powerful transnational media corporations (mostly
US based), working to advance the cause of global markets and the
CIA agenda.
�
(13)
David Guyatt, Subverting
the Media (undated)
In an October 1977, article published by Rolling Stone
magazine, Bernstein reported that more than 400 American journalists
worked for the CIA. Bernstein went on to reveal that this cozy arrangement
had covered the preceding 25 years. Sources told Bernstein that the
New York Times, America�s most respected newspaper at the time,
was one of the CIA�s closest media collaborators. Seeking to
spread the blame, the New York Times published an article in December
1977, revealing that �more than eight hundred news and public
information organisations and individuals,� had participated
in the CIA�s covert subversion of the media.
�One
journalist is worth twenty agents,� a high-level source told
Bernstein. Spies were trained as journalists and then later infiltrated
� often with the publishers consent - into the most prestigious
media outlets in America, including the New York Times and Time Magazine.
Likewise, numerous reputable journalists underwent training in various
aspects of �spook-craft� by the CIA. This included techniques
as varied as secret writing, surveillance and other spy crafts.
The subversion
operation was orchestrated by Frank Wisner, an old CIA hand who�s
clandestine activities dated back to WW11. Wisner�s media manipulation
programme became known as the �Wisner Wurlitzer,� and proved
an effective technique for sending journalists overseas to spy for
the CIA. Of the fifty plus overseas news proprietary�s owned
by the CIA were The Rome Daily American, The Manilla Times and the
Bangkok Post.
Yet, according
to some experts, there was another profound reason for the CIA�s
close relations with the media. In his book, �Virtual Government,�
author Alex Constantine goes to some lengths to explore the birth
and spread of Operation Mockingbird. This, Constantine explains, was
a CIA project designed to influence the major media for domestic propaganda
purposes. One of the most important �assets� used by the
CIA�s Frank Wisner was Philip Graham, publisher of the Washington
Post. A decade later both Wisner and Graham committed suicide �
leading some to question the exact nature of their deaths. More recently
doubts have been cast on Wisner�s suicide verdict by some observers
who believed him to have been a Soviet agent.
�
(14)
Michael Hasty, Secret
Admirers: The Bushes and the Washington Post (5th February
, 2004)
In an article published by the media watchdog group, Fairness and
Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), Henwood traced the Washington Post's
Establishment connections to Eugene Meyer, who took control of the
Post in 1933. Meyer transferred ownership to his daughter Katherine
and her husband, Philip Graham, after World War II, when he was appointed
by Harry S. Truman to serve as the first president of the World Bank.
Meyer had been "a Wall Street banker, director of President Wilson's
War Finance Corporation, a governor of the Federal Reserve System,
and director of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation," Henwood
wrote.
Philip
Graham, Meyer's successor, had been in military intelligence during
the war. When he became the Post's publisher, he continued to have
close contact with his fellow upper-class intelligence veterans -
now making policy at the newly formed CIA - and actively promoted
the CIA's goals in his newspaper. The incestuous relationship between
the Post and the intelligence community even extended to its hiring
practices. Watergate-era editor Ben Bradlee also had an intelligence
background; and before he became a journalist, reporter Bob Woodward
was an officer in Naval Intelligence. In a 1977 article in Rolling
Stone magazine about CIA influence in American media, Woodward's partner,
Carl Bernstein, quoted this from a CIA official: "It was widely
known that Phil Graham was somebody you could get help from."
Graham has been identified by some investigators as the main contact
in Project Mockingbird, the CIA program to infiltrate domestic American
media. In her autobiography, Katherine Graham described how her husband
worked overtime at the Post during the Bay of Pigs operation to protect
the reputations of his friends from Yale who had organized the ill-fated
venture.
After Graham
committed suicide, and his widow Katherine assumed the role of publisher,
she continued her husband's policies of supporting the efforts of
the intelligence community in advancing the foreign policy and economic
agenda of the nation's ruling elites. In a retrospective column written
after her own death last year, FAIR analyst Norman Solomon wrote,
"Her newspaper mainly functioned as a helpmate to the war-makers
in the White House, State Department and Pentagon." It accomplished
this function (and continues to do so) using all the classic propaganda
techniques of evasion, confusion, misdirection, targeted emphasis,
disinformation, secrecy, omission of important facts, and selective
leaks.
Graham
herself rationalized this policy in a speech she gave at CIA headquarters
in 1988. "We live in a dirty and dangerous world," she said.
"There are some things the general public does not need to know
and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government
can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can
decide whether to print what it knows."
�
(15)
Doug Henwood, The
Washington Post: The Establishment's Paper (January, 1990)
After World War II, when Harry Truman named this lifelong Republican
as first president of the World Bank, Meyer made his son-in-law, Philip
L. Graham, publisher of the paper. Meyer stayed at the Bank for only
six months and returned to the Post as its chairman. But with Phil
Graham in charge, there was little for Meyer to do. He transferred
ownership to Philip and Katharine Graham, and retired.
Phil Graham
maintained Meyer's intimacy with power. Like many members of his class
and generation, his postwar view was shaped by his work in wartime
intelligence; a classic Cold War liberal, he was uncomfortable with
McCarthy, but quite friendly with the personnel and policies of the
CIA. He saw the role of the press as mobilizing public assent for
policies made by his Washington neighbors; the public deserved to
know only what the inner circle deemed proper. According to Howard
Bray's Pillars of the Post, Graham and other top Posters knew details
of several covert operations - including advance knowledge of the
disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion - which they chose not to share with
their readers.
When the
manic-depressive Graham shot himself in 1963, the paper passed to
his widow, Katharine. Though out of her depth at first, her instincts
were safely establishmentarian. According to Deborah Davis' biography,
Katharine the Great, Mrs. Graham was scandalized by the cultural and
political revolutions of the 1960s, and wept when LBJ fused to run
for reelection in 1968. (After Graham asserted that the book as "fantasy,"
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich pulled 20,000 copies of Katharine the Great
in 1979. The book as re-issued by National Press in 87.)
The Post
was one of the last major papers to turn against the Vietnam War.
Even today, it hews to a hard foreign policy line - usually to the
right of The New York Times, a paper not known or having transcended
the Cold War.
There was
Watergate, of course, that model of aggressive reporting by the Post.
But even here, Graham's Post was doing the establishment's work. As
Graham herself said, the investigation couldn't have succeeded without
the cooperation of people inside the government willing to talk to
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
These talkers
may well have included the CIA; it's widely suspected that Deep Throat
was an Agency man (or men). Davis argues that Post editor Ben Bradlee
knew Deep Throat, and may even have set him up with Woodward. She
produces evidence that in the early 1950s, Bradlee crafted propaganda
for the CIA on the Rosenberg case for European consumption. Bradlee
denies working "for" the CIA, though he admits having worked
for the U.S. Information Agency - perhaps distinction without a difference.
In any
case, it's clear that a major portion of the establishment wanted
Nixon out. Having accomplished this, there was little taste for further
crusading. Nixon had denounced the Post as "Communist" during
the 1950s. Graham offered her support to Nixon upon his election in
1968, but he snubbed her, even directing his allies to challenge the
Post Co.'s TV license in Florida a few ears later. The Reagans were
a different story - for one thing, Ron's crowd knew that seduction
was a better way to get good press than hostility. According to Nancy
Reagan's memoirs, Graham welcomed Ron and Nancy to her Georgetown
house in 1981 with a kiss. During the darkest days of Iran-Contra,
Graham and Post editorial page editor Meg GreenfieId - lunch and phone
companions to Nancy throughout the Reagan years - offered the First
Lady frequent expressions of sympathy. Graham and the establishment
never got far from the Gipper.
�
(16)
Carl Bernstein, CIA
and the Media, Rolling Stone Magazine (20th October,
1977)
In 1953, Joseph Alsop, then one of America’s leading syndicated columnists, went to the Philippines to cover an election. He did not go because he was asked to do so by his syndicate. He did not go because he was asked to do so by the newspapers that printed his column. He went at the request of the CIA.
Alsop is one of more than 400 American journalists who in the past twenty-five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters.
Some of these journalists’ relationships with the Agency were tacit; some were explicit. There was cooperation, accommodation and overlap. Journalists provided a full range of clandestine services -- from simple intelligence gathering to serving as go-betweens with spies in Communist countries. Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors-without-portfolio for their country. Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested it the derring-do of the spy business as in filing articles, and, the smallest category, full-time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad. In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements America’s leading news organizations.
The history of the CIA’s involvement with the American press continues to be shrouded by an official policy of obfuscation and deception...
Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were William Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Henry Luce of Time Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the Louisville Courier-Journal and James Copley of the Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, The Miami Herald, and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald-Tribune. By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with The New York Times, CBS, and Time Inc.
From the Agency’s perspective, there is nothing untoward in such relationships, and any ethical questions are a matter for the journalistic profession to resolve, not the intelligence community...
Many journalists were used by the CIA to assist in this process and they had the reputation of being among the best in the business. The peculiar nature of the job of the foreign correspondent is ideal for such work; he is accorded unusual access, by his host country, permitted to travel in areas often off-limits to other Americans, spends much of his time cultivating sources in governments, academic institutions, the military establishment and the scientific communities. He has the opportunity to form long-term personal relationships with sources and -- perhaps more than any other category of American operative - is in a position to make correct judgments about the susceptibility and availability of foreign nationals for recruitment as spies.
The Agency’s dealings with the press began during the earliest stages of the Cold War. Allen Dulles, who became director of the CIA in 1953, sought to establish a recruiting-and-cover capability within America’s most prestigious journalistic institutions. By operating under the guise of accredited news correspondents, Dulles believed, CIA operatives abroad would be accorded a degree of access and freedom of movement unobtainable under almost any other type of cover.
American publishers, like so many other corporate and institutional leaders at the time, were willing us commit the resources of their companies to the struggle against “global Communism.” Accordingly, the traditional line separating the American press corps and government was often indistinguishable: rarely was a news agency used to provide cover for CIA operatives abroad without the knowledge and consent of either its principal owner; publisher or senior editor. Thus, contrary to the notion that the CIA era and news executives allowed themselves and their organizations to become handmaidens to the intelligence services. “Let’s not pick on some poor reporters, for God’s sake,” William Colby exclaimed at one point to the Church committee’s investigators. “Let’s go to the managements. They were witting” In all, about twenty-five news organizations (including those listed at the beginning of this article) provided cover for the Agency...
Many journalists who covered World War II were close to people in the Office of Strategic Services, the wartime predecessor of the CIA; more important, they were all on the same side. When the war ended and many OSS officials went into the CIA, it was only natural that these relationships would continue.
Meanwhile, the first postwar generation of journalists entered the profession; they shared the same political and professional values as their mentors. “You had a gang of people who worked together during World War II and never got over it,” said one Agency official. “They were genuinely motivated and highly susceptible to intrigue and being on the inside. Then in the Fifties and Sixties there was a national consensus about a national threat. The Vietnam War tore everything to pieces - shredded the consensus and threw it in the air.” Another Agency official observed: “Many journalists didn’t give a second thought to associating with the Agency. But there was a point when the ethical issues which most people had submerged finally surfaced. Today, a lot of these guys vehemently deny that they had any relationship with the Agency.”
The CIA even ran a formal training program in the 1950s to teach its agents to be journalists. Intelligence officers were “taught to make noises like reporters,” explained a high CIA official, and were then placed in major news organizations with help from management. “These were the guys who went through the ranks and were told, “You’re going to be a journalist,” the CIA official said. Relatively few of the 400-some relationships described in Agency files followed that pattern, however; most involved persons who were already bona fide journalists when they began undertaking tasks for the Agency. The Agency’s relationships with journalists, as described in CIA files, include the following general categories:
* Legitimate, accredited staff members of news organizations - usually reporters. Some were paid; some worked for the Agency on a purely voluntary basis.
* Stringers and freelancers. Most were payrolled by the Agency under standard contractual terms.
* Employees of so-called CIA “proprietaries.” During the past twenty-five years, the Agency has secretly bankrolled numerous foreign press services, periodicals and newspapers -- both English and foreign language -- which provided excellent cover for CIA operatives.
* Columnists and commentators. There are perhaps a dozen well-known columnists and broadcast commentators whose relationships with the CIA go far beyond those normally maintained between reporters and their sources. They are referred to at the Agency as “known assets” and can be counted on to perform a variety of undercover tasks; they are considered receptive to the Agency’s point of view on various subjects.
Murky details of CIA relationships with individuals and news organizations began trickling out in 1973 when it was first disclosed that the CIA had, on occasion, employed journalists. Those reports, combined with new information, serve as casebook studies of the Agency’s use of journalists for intelligence purposes.
The New York Times - The Agency’s relationship with the Times was by far its most valuable among newspapers, according to CIA officials. [It was] general Times policy to provide assistance to the CIA whenever possible...
CIA officials cite two reasons why the Agency’s working relationship with the Times was closer and more extensive than with any other paper: the fact that the Times maintained the largest foreign news operation in American daily journalism; and the close personal ties between the men who ran both institutions...
The Columbia Broadcasting System -- CBS was unquestionably the CIA’s most valuable broadcasting asset. CBS president William Paley and Allen Dulles enjoyed an easy working and social relationship. Over the years, the network provided cover for CIA employees, including at least one well-known foreign correspondent and several stringers; it supplied outtakes of newsfilm to the CIA; established a formal channel of communication between the Washington bureau chief and the Agency; gave the Agency access to the CBS newsfilm library; and allowed reports by CBS correspondents to the Washington and New York newsrooms to be routinely monitored by the CIA. Once a year during the 1950s and early 1960s, CBS correspondents joined the CIA hierarchy for private dinners and briefings...
At the headquarters of CBS News in New York, Paley’s cooperation with the CIA is taken for granted by many news executives and reporters, despite the denials. Paley, 76, was not interviewed by Salant’s investigators. “It wouldn’t do any good,” said one CBS executive. “It is the single subject about which his memory has failed.”
Time and Newsweek magazines - According to CIA and Senate sources, Agency files contain written agreements with former foreign correspondents and stringers for both the weekly news magazines. The same sources refused to say whether the CIA has ended all its associations with individuals who work for the two publications. Allen Dulles often interceded with his good friend, the late Henry Luce, founder of Time and Life magazines, who readily allowed certain members of his staff to work for the Agency and agreed to provide jobs and credentials for other CIA operatives who lacked journalistic experience...
At Newsweek, Agency sources reported, the CIA engaged the services of several foreign correspondents and stringers under arrangements approved by senior editors at the magazine...
“To the best of my knowledge:’ said [Harry] Kern, [Newsweek’s foreign editor from 1945 to 1956] “nobody at Newsweek worked for the CIA.... The informal relationship was there. Why have anybody sign anything? What we knew we told them [the CIA] and the State Department.... When I went to Washington, I would talk to Foster or Allen Dulles about what was going on .... We thought it was admirable at the time. We were all on the same side.” CIA officials say that Kern's dealings with the Agency were extensive...
When Newsweek was purchased by the Washington Post Company, publisher Philip L. Graham was informed by Agency officials that the CIA occasionally used the magazine for cover purposes, according to CIA sources. “It was widely known that Phil Graham was somebody you could get help from,” said a former deputy director of the Agency... But Graham, who committed suicide in 1963, apparently knew little of the specifics of any cover arrangements with Newsweek, CIA sources said...
Information about Agency dealings with the Washington Post newspaper is extremely sketchy. According to CIA officials, some Post stringers have been CIA employees, but these officials say they do not know if anyone in the Post management was aware of the arrangements...
Other major news organizations - According to Agency officials, CIA files document additional cover arrangements with the following news gathering organizations, among others: the New York Herald Tribune, Saturday Evening Post, Scripps-Howard Newspapers, Hearst Newspapers, Associated Press, United Press International, the Mutual Broadcasting System, Reuters and The Miami Herald...
“And that's just a small part of the list,” in the words of one official who served in the CIA hierarchy. Like many sources, this official said that the only way to end the uncertainties about aid furnished the Agency by journalists is to disclose the contents of the CIA files - a course opposed by almost all of the thirty-five present and former CIA officials interviewed over the course of a year.
The CIA’s use of journalists continued virtually unabated until 1973 when, in response to public disclosure that the Agency had secretly employed American reporters, William Colby began scaling down the program. In his public statements, Colby conveyed the impression that the use of journalists had been minimal and of limited importance to the Agency.
He then initiated a series of moves intended to convince the press, Congress and the public that the CIA had gotten out of the news business. But according to Agency officials, Colby had in fact thrown a protective net around his most valuable intelligence assets in the journalistic community...
The CIA even ran a formal training program in the 1950s to teach its agents to be journalists. Intelligence officers were �taught to make noises like reporters,� explained a high CIA official, and were then placed in major news organizations with help from management. �These were the guys who went through the ranks and were told, �You�re going to be a journalist,� the CIA official said. Relatively few of the 400-some relationships described in Agency files followed that pattern, however; most involved persons who were already bona fide journalists when they began undertaking tasks for the Agency...
At the headquarters of CBS News in New York, Paley�s cooperation with the CIA is taken for granted by many news executives and reporters, despite the denials. Paley, 76, was not interviewed by Salant�s investigators. �It wouldn�t do any good,� said one CBS executive. �It is the single subject about which his memory has failed.�
Time and Newsweek magazines. According to CIA and Senate sources, Agency files contain written agreements with former foreign correspondents and stringers for both the weekly news magazines. The same sources refused to say whether the CIA has ended all its associations with individuals who work for the two publications. Allen Dulles often interceded with his good friend, the late Henry Luce, founder of Time and Life magazines, who readily allowed certain members of his staff to work for the Agency and agreed to provide jobs and credentials for other CIA operatives who lacked journalistic experience.
At Newsweek, Agency sources reported, the CIA engaged the services of several foreign correspondents and stringers under arrangements approved by senior editors at the magazine...
After Colby left the Agency on January 28th, 1976, and was succeeded by George Bush, the CIA announced a new policy: �Effective immediately, the CIA will not enter into any paid or contract relationship with any full-time or part-time news correspondent accredited by any US news service, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network or station.� ... The text of the announcement noted that the CIA would continue to �welcome� the voluntary, unpaid cooperation of journalists. Thus, many relationships were permitted to remain intact.
�
(17)
David Guyatt, Subverting
the Media (undated)
In discussing the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Dan Rather, the
well-loved anchorman for CBS Television, described the now famous
Zapruder film that captured footage of the shot which killed President
John F. Kennedy. The movie, taken by amateur cameraman, Abraham Zapruder,
was quickly snapped-up by Life magazine for $250,000.00. Although
Life published still frames of the movie, the 18 second film was kept
under lock and key � not to be seen by Americans until 1975.
But Rather�s
remarks were misleading. He told his viewers that the film showed
JFK falling forward � confirming the official view that Kennedy
had been shot from behind. However, the film clearly showed Kennedy
lurching violently backwards, evidence of a frontal shot. To add to
the confusion, the Warren Commission report printed two frames of
the film in reverse � again implying a rear shot - an accident
the FBI typified as a �printing error.�
Meanwhile,
still pictures lifted from the Zapruder film were also published by
Life magazine. Remarkably, they too were published in reverse order,
thereby creating the impression that the President had been shot from
behind by lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald. Until the film was shown
to Americans in its entirity, no one was the wiser. Following the
broadcast in 1975, a massive controversy followed giving rise to ongoing
allegations of conspiracy.
The Zapruder
film clearly showed President Kennedy had also been shot from the
front. The result immeasurably strengthened the charge - that had
been bubbling in the background � that the President had been
assassinated as a result of a well orchestrated conspiracy, and that
this was covered-up to protect the guilty, who many now believe involved
senior figures in the CIA and US military. Not least it was pointed
out that Henry Luce, the founder of Life magazine was a close personal
friend of Allen Dulles, the Director of the CIA. Moreover, the individual
who purchased the Zapruder film for Life magazine was C.J. Jackson,
formerly a �psychological warfare� consultant to the President.
Inevitably,
these events were to lead to accusations that the media were culpable
of the worst form of toadying and propaganda. This, in turn raised
serious questions about the role and integrity of the mass media.
Some years later, Washington Post reporter, Carl Bernstein �
who came to fame with his colleague Bob Woodward, for their expose
of the Nixon administration�s illegal re-election campaign activities,
known as �Watergate� � dropped a media bombshell on
an unsuspecting America.
In an
October 1977, article published by Rolling Stone magazine, Bernstein
reported that more than 400 American journalists worked for the CIA.
Bernstein went on to reveal that this cozy arrangement had covered
the preceding 25 years. Sources told Bernstein that the New York Times,
America�s most respected newspaper at the time, was one of the
CIA�s closest media collaborators. Seeking to spread the blame,
the New York Times published an article in December 1977, revealing
that �more than eight hundred news and public information organisations
and individuals,� had participated in the CIA�s covert subversion
of the media.
�One
journalist is worth twenty agents,� a high-level source told
Bernstein. Spies were trained as journalists and then later infiltrated
� often with the publishers consent - into the most prestigious
media outlets in America, including the New York Times and Time Magazine.
Likewise, numerous reputable journalists underwent training in various
aspects of �spook-craft� by the CIA. This included techniques
as varied as secret writing, surveillance and other spy crafts.
The subversion
operation was orchestrated by Frank Wisner, an old CIA hand who�s
clandestine activities dated back to WW11. Wisner�s media manipulation
programme became known as the �Wisner Wurlitzer,� and proved
an effective technique for sending journalists overseas to spy for
the CIA. Of the fifty plus overseas news proprietary�s owned
by the CIA were The Rome Daily American, The Manilla Times and the
Bangkok Post.
Yet, according
to some experts, there was another profound reason for the CIA�s
close relations with the media. In his book, �Virtual Government,�
author Alex Constantine goes to some lengths to explore the birth
and spread of Operation Mockingbird. This, Constantine explains, was
a CIA project designed to influence the major media for domestic propaganda
purposes. One of the most important �assets� used by the
CIA�s Frank Wisner was Philip Graham, publisher of the Washington
Post. A decade later both Wisner and Graham committed suicide �
leading some to question the exact nature of their deaths. More recently
doubts have been cast on Wisner�s suicide verdict by some observers
who believed him to have been a Soviet agent.
Meanwhile,
however, Wisner had �implemented his plan and owned respected
members of the New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communication
vehicles, plus stringers�� according to Deborah Davis in
her biography of Katharine Graham � wife of Philip Graham - and
current publisher of the Washington Post. The operation was overseen
by Allen Dulles, Director of Central Intelligence. Operation Mockingbird
continued to flourish with CIA agents boasting at having �important
assets� inside every major news outlet in the country.� The list included such luminaries of the US media as Henry Luce, publisher
of Time Magazine, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, of the New York Times and
C.D. Jackson of Fortune Magazine, according to Constantine.
But there
was another aspect to Mockingbird, Constantine reveals in an Internet
essay. Citing historian C. Vann Woodward�s New York Times article
of 1987, Ronald Reagan, later to become President of the US, was a
FBI snitch earlier in his life. This dated back to the time when Reagan
was President of the Actor�s Guild. Woodward says that Reagan
�fed the names of suspect people in his organisation to the FBI
secretly and regularly enough to be assigned an informer�s code
number, T.10.� The purpose was to purge the film industry of
�subversives.�
As these
stories hit the news, Senate investigators began to probe the CIA
sponsored manipulation of the media � the �Fourth Estate�
that supposedly was dedicated to acting as a check and balance on
the excesses of the executive. This investigation was, however, curtailed
at the insistence of Central Intelligence Agency Directors, William
Colby and George Bush � who would later be elected US President.
The information gathered by the Senate Select Intelligence Committee
chaired by Senator Frank Church, was �deliberately buried� Bernstein reported.
Despite
this suppression of evidence, information leaked out that revealed
the willing role of media executives to subvert their own industry. �Let�s not pick on some reporters,� CIA Director William
Colby stated during an interview. �Let�s go to the managements.
They were witting.� Bernstein concluded that �America�s
leading publishers allowed themselves and their news services to become
handmaidens to the intelligence services.� Of the household names
that went along with this arrangement were: Columbia Broadcasting
System, Copley News Service � which gave the CIA confidential
information on antiwar and black protestors � ABC TV, NBC, Associated
Press, United Press International, Reuters, Newsweek, Time, Scripps-Howard,
Hearst Newspapers and the Miami Herald. Bernstein additionally stated
that the two most bullish media outlets to co-operate were the new
York Times and CBS Television. The New York Times even went so far
as to submit stories to Allen Dulles and his replacement, John McCone,
to vet and approve before publication.
Slowly,
the role of Mockingbird in muzzling and manipulating the press began
to be revealed. In 1974, two former CIA agents, Victor Marchetti and
John D. Marks, published a sensational book entitled �The CIA
and the Cult of Intelligence.� The book caused uproar for the
many revelations it contained. Included amongst them was the fact
that the, until then, widely respected Encounter magazine was indirectly
funded by the CIA. The vehicle used to covertly transfer funds to
Encounter and many other publications, was the Congress for Cultural
Freedom (CCF)� a CIA front. A decade earlier, in 1965, the CCF
was renamed Forum World Features (FWF) and purchased by Kern House
Enterprises, under the direction of John Hay Whitney, publisher of
the International Herald Tribune and former US Ambassador to the United
Kingdom.
The Chairman
of Forum World Features was Brian Crozier, who resigned his position
shortly before the explosive book went on sale. Crozier, a former �Economist�
journalist, was a �contact� of Britain�s Secret Intelligence
Service (MI6). His employment to head up the CIA financed Forum World
Features in 1965, caused a row with MI6 who felt the CIA had breached
the secret agreement between the UK and USA by recruiting one of their
own assets.
Crozier�s
media style was more discrete than Mockingbird. He preferred, when
possible, to insert his pre-spun propaganda stories to unwitting members
of the media, who would reprint them unaware of the bias they contained.
In time, Crozier would go on to head up a shadowy anti subversive
and dirty tricks group called the �61,� that sought to counter
communist propaganda. Another group of which he was a member was the
Pinay Cercle � a right wing Atlanticist group funded by the CIA
- that claimed credit for getting Margaret Thatcher elected as British
Prime Minister.
Another
propaganda operation, run from Lisburn barracks in Northern Ireland,
and under nominal British Army control, participated in extensive
media manipulation around the same time. Known as �Clockwork
Orange� this involved the construction of propaganda material
designed to discredit prominent members of the then Labour government
as well as some in the Conservative shadow cabinet. Especially targeted
was then Prime Minister Harold Wilson. Clockwork Orange relied heavily
on forged documents that would be given to selected journalists for
publication. Many of these forgeries sought to demonstrate secret
communist ties � or east bloc intelligence affiliations � amongst high profile politicians.
The aim
was to destabilise Wilson and the Labour government by falsely showing
them to be soft on communism or even pro communist. This operation
clearly favoured a right wing Conservative administration under the
leadership of Mrs. Thatcher. In the event, Wilson resigned, said to
have been sickened by the numerous personal snipe attacks against
him. During the time he was under siege, Wilson experienced numerous
break ins at his office, as well as having his phone lines tapped
-courtesy of unnamed officials in the security service, it is believed.
By 1979 the Conservative party was returned to power.
Yet, with
the demise of the cold war the motive for media propaganda has collapsed.
Or has it? James Lilly, former Director of Operations at the CIA later
became Director of Asian studies at the American Enterprise Institute � a think tank heavily staffed by former intelligence types.
Lilly, in giving testimony to a Senate committee during 1996 observed:
�Journalists, I think, you don�t recruit them. We can�t
do that. They�ve told us not to do that. But you certainly sit
down with your journalists, and I�ve done this and the Station
Chief has done it, others have done it��
But even
as the cold war rationale for subverting the media recedes into the
distance, press manipulation continues anon. A classified CIA report
surfaced in 1992, that revealed the Agency�s public affairs office
�� has relationships with reporters from every major wire
service, newspaper, news weekly, and television network in the nation.�
The report added that the benefits of these continued contacts had
been fruitful to the CIA by turning �Intelligence failure stories
into intelligence success stories�� Basking in a glow of
self satisfaction, the report continued �In many cases, we have
persuaded reporters to postpone, change, hold or even scrap stories
that could have adversely affected national security interests.�
But the
last word goes to Noam Chomsky. A Professor of Linguistics at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Chomsky has extensively investigated
the role of today�s media. His analysis is un-nerving. The democratic
postulate, Chomsky says, �is that the media are independent and
committed to discovering and reporting the truth�� Despite
this axiom, Chomsky finds that the media supports �established
power� and is �responsive to the needs of government and
major power groups.� He additionally argues that the media is
a mechanism for pervasive �thought control� of elite interests
and that ordinary citizens need to �undertake a course of intellectual
self-defence to protect themselves from manipulation and control��
The covert role of the media has now apparently shifted its focus.
One time expediter of the �cold war,� it now clamours for
the extension of �corporate power.�
�
(18)
Steve
Kangas, The
Origins of the Overclass (1998)
The wealthy
have always used many methods to accumulate wealth, but it was not
until the mid-1970s that these methods coalesced into a superbly organized,
cohesive and efficient machine. After 1975, it became greater than
the sum of its parts, a smooth flowing organization of advocacy groups,
lobbyists, think tanks, conservative foundations, and PR firms that
hurtled the richest 1 percent into the stratosphere.
The origins
of this machine, interestingly enough, can be traced back to the CIA.
This is not to say the machine is a formal CIA operation, complete
with code name and signed documents. (Although such evidence may yet
surface - and previously unthinkable domestic operations such as MK-ULTRA,
CHAOS and MOCKINGBIRD show this to be a distinct possibility.) But
what we do know already indicts the CIA strongly enough. Its principle
creators were Irving Kristol, Paul Weyrich, William Simon, Richard
Mellon Scaife, Frank Shakespeare, William F. Buckley, Jr., the Rockefeller
family, and more. Almost all the machine's creators had CIA backgrounds.
During the
1970s, these men would take the propaganda and operational techniques
they had learned in the Cold War and apply them to the Class War.
Therefore it is no surprise that the American version of the machine
bears an uncanny resemblance to the foreign versions designed to fight
communism. The CIA's expert and comprehensive organization of the
business class would succeed beyond their wildest dreams. In 1975,
the richest 1 percent owned 22 percent of America�s wealth. By
1992, they would nearly double that, to 42 percent - the highest level
of inequality in the 20th century.
How did this
alliance start? The CIA has always recruited the nation�s elite:
millionaire businessmen, Wall Street brokers, members of the national
news media, and Ivy League scholars. During World War II, General
"Wild Bill" Donovan became chief of the Office of Strategic
Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA. Donovan recruited so exclusively
from the nation�s rich and powerful that members eventually came
to joke that "OSS" stood for "Oh, so social!"
Another early
elite was Allen Dulles, who served as Director of the CIA from 1953
to 1961. Dulles was a senior partner at the Wall Street firm of Sullivan
and Cromwell, which represented the Rockefeller empire and other mammoth
trusts, corporations and cartels. He was also a board member of the
J. Henry Schroeder Bank, with offices in Wall Street, London, Zurich
and Hamburg. His financial interests across the world would become
a conflict of interest when he became head of the CIA. Like Donavan,
he would recruit exclusively from society�s elite...
Although many people think
that the CIA�s primary mission during the Cold War was to "deter
communism," Noam Chomksy correctly points out that its real mission
was "deterring democracy." From corrupting elections to
overthrowing democratic governments, from assassinating elected leaders
to installing murderous dictators, the CIA has virtually always replaced
democracy with dictatorship. It didn�t help that the CIA was
run by businessmen, whose hostility towards democracy is legendary.
The reason they overthrew so many democracies is because the people
usually voted for policies that multi-national corporations didn't
like: land reform, strong labor unions, nationalization of their industries,
and greater regulation protecting workers, consumers and the environment...
Journalism
is a perfect cover for CIA agents. People talk freely to journalists,
and few think suspiciously of a journalist aggressively searching
for information. Journalists also have power, influence and clout.
Not surprisingly, the CIA began a mission in the late 1940s to recruit
American journalists on a wide scale, a mission it dubbed Operation
MOCKINGBIRD. The agency wanted these journalists not only to relay
any sensitive information they discovered, but also to write anti-Communist,
pro-capitalist propaganda when needed.
The instigators
of MOCKINGBIRD were Frank Wisner, Allan Dulles, Richard Helms and
Philip Graham. Graham was the husband of Katherine Graham, today�s
publisher of the Washington Post. In fact, it was the Post�s
ties to the CIA that allowed it to grow so quickly after the war,
both in readership and influence.
MOCKINGBIRD
was extraordinarily successful. In no time, the agency had recruited
at least 25 media organizations to disseminate CIA propaganda. At
least 400 journalists would eventually join the CIA payroll, according
to the CIA�s testimony before a stunned Church Committee in 1975.
(The committee felt the true number was considerably higher.) The
names of those recruited reads like a Who's Who of journalism...
The CIA also
secretly bought or created its own media companies. It owned 40 percent
of the Rome Daily American at a time when communists were threatening
to win the Italian elections. Worse, the CIA has bought many domestic
media companies. A prime example is Capital Cities, created in 1954
by CIA businessman William Casey (who would later become Reagan�s
CIA director). Another founder was Lowell Thomas, a close friend and
business contact with CIA Director Allen Dulles. Another founder was
CIA businessman Thomas Dewey. By 1985, Capital Cities had grown so
powerful that it was able to buy an entire TV network: ABC.
For those
who believe in "separation of press and state," the very
idea that the CIA has secret propaganda outlets throughout the media
is appalling. The reason why America was so oblivious to CIA crimes
in the 40s and 50s was because the media willingly complied with the
agency. Even today, when the immorality of the CIA should be an open-and-shut
case, "debate" about the issue rages in the media...
In the mid-1970s, at this
historic low point in American conservatism, the CIA began a major campaign
to turn corporate fortunes around. They did this in several ways. First,
they helped create numerous foundations to finance their domestic operations.
Even before 1973, the CIA had co-opted the most famous ones, like the
Ford, Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations. But after 1973, they created
more. One of their most notorious recruits was billionaire Richard Mellon
Scaife. During World War II, Scaife's father served in the OSS, the
forerunner of the CIA. By his mid-twenties, both of Scaife's parents
had died, and he inherited a fortune under four foundations: the Carthage
Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Scaife Family Foundations
and the Allegheny Foundation. In the early 1970s, Scaife was encouraged
by CIA agent Frank Barnett to begin investing his fortune to fight the "Soviet menace." From 1973 to 1975, Scaife ran Forum World
Features, a foreign news service used as a front to disseminate CIA
propaganda around the world. Shortly afterwards he began donating millions
to fund the New Right.
�
(18) CIA Document Concerning Criticism of the Warren Report (#1035-960)
1. From the day of President Kennedy's assassination on, there has been speculation about the responsibility for his murder. Although this was stemmed for a time by the Warren Commission report, (which appeared at the end of September 1964), various writers have now had time to scan the Commission's published report and documents for new pretexts for questioning, and there has been a new wave of books and articles criticizing the Commission's findings. In most cases the critics have speculated as to the existence of some kind of conspiracy, and often they have implied that the Commission itself was involved. Presumably as a result of the increasing challenge to the Warren Commission's report, a public opinion poll recently indicated that 46% of the American public did not think that Oswald acted alone, while more than half of those polled thought that the Commission had left some questions unresolved. Doubtless polls abroad would show similar, or possibly more adverse results.
2. This trend of opinion is a matter of concern to the U.S. government, including our organization. The members of the Warren Commission were naturally chosen for their integrity, experience and prominence. They represented both major parties, and they and their staff were deliberately drawn from all sections of the country. Just because of the standing of the Commissioners, efforts to impugn their rectitude and wisdom tend to cast doubt on the whole leadership of American society. Moreover, there seems to be an increasing tendency to hint that President Johnson himself, as the one person who might be said to have benefited, was in some way responsible for the assassination.
Innuendo of such seriousness affects not only the individual concerned, but also the whole reputation of the American government. Our organization itself is directly involved: among other facts, we contributed information to the investigation. Conspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization, for example by falsely alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for us. The aim of this dispatch is to provide material countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists, so as to inhibit the circulation of such claims in other countries. Background information is supplied in a classified section and in a number of unclassified attachments.
3. Action. We do not recommend that discussion of the assassination question be initiated where it is not already taking place. Where discussion is active [business] addresses are requested:
a. To discuss the publicity problem with and friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors), pointing out that the Warren Commission made as thorough an investigation as humanly possible, that the charges of the critics are without serious foundation, and that further speculative discussion only plays into the hands of the opposition. Point out also that parts of the conspiracy talk appear to be deliberately generated by Communist propagandists. Urge them to use their influence to discourage unfounded and irresponsible speculation.
b. To employ propaganda assets to [negate] and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose. The unclassified attachments to this guidance should provide useful background material for passing to assets. Our ploy should point out, as applicable, that the critics are (I) wedded to theories adopted before the evidence was in, (I) politically interested, (III) financially interested, (IV) hasty and inaccurate in their research, or (V) infatuated with their own theories. In the course of discussions of the whole phenomenon of criticism, a useful strategy may be to single out Epstein's theory for attack, using the attached Fletcher article and Spectator piece for background. (Although Mark Lane's book is much less convincing than Epstein's and comes off badly where confronted by knowledgeable critics, it is also much more difficult to answer as a whole, as one becomes lost in a morass of unrelated details.)
4. In private to media discussions not directed at any particular writer, or in attacking publications which may be yet forthcoming, the following arguments should be useful:
a. No significant new evidence has emerged which the Commission did not consider. The assassination is sometimes compared (e.g., by Joachim Joesten and Bertrand Russell) with the Dreyfus case; however, unlike that case, the attack on the Warren Commission have produced no new evidence, no new culprits have been convincingly identified, and there is no agreement among the critics. (A better parallel, though an imperfect one, might be with the Reichstag fire of 1933, which some competent historians (Fritz Tobias, AJ.P. Taylor, D.C. Watt) now believe was set by Vander Lubbe on his own initiative, without acting for either Nazis or Communists; the Nazis tried to pin the blame on the Communists, but the latter have been more successful in convincing the world that the Nazis were to blame.)
b. Critics usually overvalue particular items and ignore others. They tend to place more emphasis on the recollections of individual witnesses (which are less reliable and more divergent - and hence offer more hand-holds for criticism) and less on ballistics, autopsy, and photographic evidence. A close examination of the Commission's records will usually show that the conflicting eyewitness accounts are quoted out of context, or were discarded by the Commission for good and sufficient reason.
c. Conspiracy on the large scale often suggested would be impossible to conceal in the United States, esp. since informants could expect to receive large royalties, etc. Note that Robert Kennedy, Attorney General at the time and John F. Kennedy's brother, would be the last man to overlook or conceal any conspiracy. And as one reviewer pointed out, Congressman Gerald R. Ford would hardly have held his tongue for the sake of the Democratic administration, and Senator Russell would have had every political interest in exposing any misdeeds on the part of Chief Justice Warren. A conspirator moreover would hardly choose a location for a shooting where so much depended on conditions beyond his control: the route, the speed of the cars, the moving target, the risk that the assassin would be discovered. A group of wealthy conspirators could have arranged much more secure conditions.
d. Critics have often been enticed by a form of intellectual pride: they light on some theory and fall in love with it; they also scoff at the Commission because it did not always answer every question with a flat decision one way or the other. Actually, the make-up of the Commission and its staff was an excellent safeguard against over-commitment to any one theory, or against the illicit transformation of probabilities into certainties.
e. Oswald would not have been any sensible person's choice for a co-conspirator. He was a "loner," mixed up, of questionable reliability and an unknown quantity to any professional intelligence service.
f. As to charges that the Commission's report was a rush job, it emerged three months after the deadline originally set. But to the degree that the Commission tried to speed up its reporting, this was largely due to the pressure of irresponsible speculation already appearing, in some cases coming from the same critics who, refusing to admit their errors, are now putting out new criticisms.
g. Such vague accusations as that "more than ten people have died mysteriously" can always be explained in some natural way e.g.: the individuals concerned have for the most part died of natural causes; the Commission staff questioned 418 witnesses (the FBI interviewed far more people, conduction 25,000 interviews and re interviews), and in such a large group, a certain number of deaths are to be expected. (When Penn Jones, one of the originators of the "ten mysterious deaths" line, appeared on television, it emerged that two of the deaths on his list were from heart attacks, one from cancer, one was from a head-on collision on a bridge, and one occurred when a driver drifted into a bridge abutment.)
5. Where possible, counter speculation by encouraging reference to the Commission's Report itself. Open-minded foreign readers should still be impressed by the care, thoroughness, objectivity and speed with which the Commission worked. Reviewers of other books might be encouraged to add to their account the idea that, checking back with the report itself, they found it far superior to the work of its critics.
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